Formal and Informal Assessment of Student Learning

Name: Derek D'Antuono
My comments are in red. Delete them if you decide to revise. - fogleman

I. Assignment Description/Requirements

Impact Crater Lab:

• Students will begin by reading about asteroids and meteors.
  • The students will use these readings to come up with a venn diagram. Picking out the characteristics that asteroids and meteors share and then the characteristics that are just pertaining to each.
• They will then begin the lab.
  • They will begin by coming up with a "focus question" pertaining to how will the mass of a meteor or the distance from Earth a meteor will affect the diameter of a crater formed.
  • The students will then come up with a hypothesis.
  • They will then perform the experiment by using marbles. To test mass, they will use marbles that are different masses, and to test the distance from the Earth they will drop the same marble from three different distances.
• After doing the lab the students will use their data to:
  • Come up with a bar graph.
  • Come up with claims and evidence.

II. Description of Learning Goals

It would be helpful to describe the GSEs that this activity addresses. I am not sure what the topic of the unit is. Are you studying energy? meteorites? It would also be useful to describe what students should know at this point. For example, is the relationship between crater depth and meteor mass expected to be linear? Fall distance? What is fall distance actually simulating in their experiment, since meteors all come from "out yonder" in the solar system?

A. Informal Assessment

Students should be able to:

• explain that the larger the mass of the meteorite the larger the diameter of the crater.
• explain that the farther the meteor is from the sand the larger the diameter of the crater.

B. Formal Assessment

Same as A.

III. Assessments

A. Description of Informal Assessment

• The students used their data to write two claims and evidence.
• I then collected the claims and evidence to read over them and make comments.
  • These comments will further the understanding of the material and also help the students to write claims and evidence from an experiment.

B. Description of Formal Assessment

• Students will be given a quiz that involves questions from this lab and their research on artificial satellites.
• The first section of the quiz is on meteor and asteroids.
  • It accounts for 40 points on the quiz. The remaining points are on artificial satellites.

IV. Analysis

A. Description of Class Context

Class: General Science
Level: 8th Grade
Class size: 24
Ability Level: Heterogeneous

B. Analysis of Informal Assessment

• This informal assessment was really helpful for a couple of different reasons. The first being I was able to see what the students got out of the experiment that we performed as a class. Having the students come to these mini conclusions of what they saw and what it meant was helpful in making my decision of what I wanted to emphasize in discussion. I could identify any misconceptions students may have formed. I also could identify great ideas that students came up with. Reading these was not only about finding things that students did wrong but also things that they did very well on and I could use as examples. The other great thing that this allowed me to do was talk to the students about effectively writing down facts they find and backing them up. Many students had ideas or claims that they wrote as evidence and vice versa. Reading over this gave me a chance to identify that this class had a real problem deciphering between the two. I was then able to address that in class as we discussed there work. Also on that same note I was able to share with them in order to have convincing evidence, they should include data from their experiment, which many of them did not do.

I like your idea of looking for things students do well. I inserted your student work samples below. Can you explain which you consider high, medium, and low, what you think each one says about what the student understands, and explain your feedback to them?

C. Analysis of Formal Assessment

• Students were asked to use recall of what they learned from the experiment they had performed in class. The true/false section of the quiz served its purpose in testing the students on recall of the difference between asteroids and meteorites. As for the short answer question was also a question of recall. When I originally wrote the quiz I wanted a question there that required some analysis and after having the students take the test that isn't what it did.
• Realizing what the mistake I had made I then wanted to make sure that the students used correct wording along with the correct answer. The two students I chose to use for the sample have answers that I found interesting.
  • Student one came to the conclusion that the larger the mass of the meteorite the more speed it will pick up as it comes to earth. We didn't test the speed of the marble as it fell but he came to this conclusion on his own. The only thing I would have like to see him do was to say it would have created a crater with a larger diameter rather then just a bigger crater. In your experiment, weren't you really looking at the effect speed had on crater size. Did this student figure this out or did he/she just talk about speed randomly?
    

• Student two simply wrote "The larger the mass of the meteor then the larger the impact and diameter of the crater will be." She had the correct answer with the correct vocab and I really couldn't ask anymore of a student, asking the question I had. Had I written a better question I may have been able to see if they truly understood the concept. What question would you have asked?
  

Formal Assessment Data: Quiz Data

Did you disaggregate the data to compare two groups in your class? What did you learn from the graph of your class scores?

V. Commentary / Reflection

A. Reflections from Informal Assessment

• If I could go back and do this assessment again I might do a some things differently. Why? I would go over the results with the students before they did the assessment. I wouldn't have them come to a conclusion as a class but maybe as a class we would analyze the numbers just so they could compare and contrast what they found with the other students in the class. I could have them put the results of all the groups on the board for everyone to see and compare theirs to. This would give the students a little more to work with then just their numbers. I would also write the two focus questions that the class came up with and tell them that their claims should answer those questions and then have evidence to back their answer. This would lead them in the right direction because that was something they struggled with. The directions would be more explicit and in turn would help them to be able to write more direct claims.

B. Reflections from Formal Assessment

• The quiz that the students received was alright but it could definitely use work. It lacks a certain depth of knowledge because it is mostly recall. What would you add? I feel like it could be tweaked very easily and be a very good quiz. I would probably keep the true false questions because they were very effective for the service they provide. They test the students on their recall of certain material you want them to know and they did that. Why do you think it is important for student to be able to distinguish between asteroids and meteorites? As for the short answer question it need another level to it. When I wrote it I felt like it required a little reflection and analysis but looking back at the answers it was overly difficult. I wanted the students to tell me why a meteorite with a larger mass makes a crater with a larger diameter but, the way I asked the question I could really penalize them if they wrote the the larger the mass the larger the diameter. This is just recall because we talked about it and they learned from their experiment. The question I would ask now would be, what variables affect the diameter of a crater and why? This would force them to analyze what they had gotten from their experiment and turn it into an explanation or conclusion with evidence. Another great way to assess this would be to give the students a scenario with two meteors of different masses and ask which would cause a crater with a greater diameter. What about asking them which is more dangerous, a small fast meteorite or a slow large one? Could you arrange your experiments/activities so that they understand whether meteor mass or velocity is more dangerous? What about providing them with data and having them analyze the data, make a claim, support it with evidence, and then relate it to their previous work?
  

VI. Conclusions

• Assessments are extremely critical in teaching because they tell us so much. They give in site not only to what are students retaining but also tell us a great deal about our teaching. Looking at the two assessments that I used here, so much could be done to improve them. That is why teachers must constantly look back and reflect on what they have done to see if they could improve in anyway. I feel like the quiz I gave needs to bring the students to another level. They need to have the student analyze and interpret. Having assessments that have a variety of different depths of knowledge and styles will allow all students to succeed. It also truly test the students for complete understanding of what it is that you are trying to have them learn. There is a belief that you can't measure how much student understands or learns, you can only measure what a student can do. I believe that if a student can perform a certain task then if that tasks has been carefully designed, adjusted and monitored then it can tell you the amount of understanding or learning that has taken place. Your assessments illustrate how difficult it sometimes is to provide students with challenging assessments.